So I decided to do a fresh install of NV to clear out unused stuff and now practically every folder that SHOULD be in my DATA folder is a BSA file.....
WHAT THE GECK?? (sorry,need a pun in here somewhere it's driving me nuts)
How am I supposed to mod if there's no folders anymore????
HELP!! (can't post screenshot yet imgbox is down for maintenance at this time)

With a fresh install you open the data folder, right-click and create the folders yourself.  Meshes, textures, sound etc.

I never had to do that,and I've done several fresh installs before. Is it a recent change? My last fresh install was around a month ago and that didn't happen...

So about the BSA's....they're fine? It won't mess anything up adding my mods?
Please understand that this is a new happening for me so I need to ask these things..

That is completely normal and always the way they are installed.

And no worries about asking questions, we all have questions at some point.

Is it safe to unpack them to their respective folders? Is that what I was supposed to do?
I would think I HAVE to....otherwise I can't use a lot of mods...

Or do I leave them that way and it just reads them as replaced?

Nope you don't have to unpack the default BSA files. I never have and I have well over 30GBs of modded stuff in my game that works just fine.

The only situations I can think of that benefit from unpacking anything is using Groovatron (its 'animations' menu has an option to play DLC animations if they're unpacked) and if you're messing with landscape/level of detail stuff. But that's a conversation too big to have here.

Good. I didn't want to even try....that's a LOT of stuff to unpack...

Thanks! Maybe I just didn't notice it or had installed a few mods before I actually looked at the file structure...But I never saw it like that before....now the slow, painful reinstall of my mods begins....sigh.

Yeah its just something you probably didn't realize. The games will always, always install their default/base files in BSA format.